Watchful Dragons

Top five books that influenced The God-Hungry Imagination:

The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry, by Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster (Upper Room Books, 1998)

On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature, by C. S. Lewis

The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, by George Lindbeck (Westminster John Knox Press, 1984)

Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, a collection of essays by American short story writer Flannery O'Connor

(To see how all these books could possibly be connected, read my book, or check future postings here!)

Quote of the Post:

"Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?...But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?"

-- From C. S. Lewis's essay "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said" (From On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. San Diego: New York: London: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc., 1982, 1966. Page 47)